Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I don't see anywhere in that message where he's accusing you of bad faith. Did that happen later in the thread?
effort + coffee = software. See also @peterb@mathstodon.xyz
174 followers 128 following 658 posts
view profile on Bluesky Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I don't see anywhere in that message where he's accusing you of bad faith. Did that happen later in the thread?
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Which ones specifically? If Stancil is relentless accusing his normal, reasonable critics - not just the ones engaging in shitposting and mockery - of bad faith, should be easy to find a few examples.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
It's actually OK and good to accuse people posting "Kill yourself hurr hurr hurrrrrr" of bad faith.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
Wizardry: The Five Ordeals. On Macintosh! youtu.be/02AQjn2-L9M
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
Some nights, you just can't get "Livin' Thing" by Electric Light Orchestra out of your brain.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
How did I end up on Earth-2
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
It's the best graphic novel of the 21st century and it's not even close. (Helen of Wyndhorn is second. But not a close second.)
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
My perspective is they should have stayed and Bartleby the Scrivenered.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
We need to check these kids' midichlorian counts before another tragedy occurs.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
アメリカのメディアフランチャイズ(例えばスーパーマン)を復活させるのは、永遠に同じままであってほしいと願うファンだけでなく、それを愛し、新しい世代のために新たな解釈を求める人々です。『ゴジラマイナスワン』はまさにそれを見事に実現しました。 (機械翻訳のため、間違いはご容赦ください)
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
@whstancil.bsky.social Here's your "opinions are guided by social consensus" POV, applied to the financial markets.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I am advising you to under no circumstances look inside your ears.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
As I said in another thread, the complaint makes clear that if the kid had asked the machine to generate copyrighted images, it would have been MORE RESPONSIBLE and done a better job of trying to stop him. It's madness. bsky.app/profile/pete...
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
But returning to my original hypothesis, there are really 2 situations here: (1) Adequate safety guardrails are possible. Then this is a standard tort law claim and these companies either fix it or continue to pay ruinous damages. (2) It's not possible. That's the "shut the company down" case.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I'm not sure what I would do in this situation but I would be giving serious consideration to "Maybe I just shut the company down and send any money back to the investors because this can never be a functional business." I guess this is why I'm not a founder. (5/5)
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
But even if you could insure this (which you almost certainly can't), the problem is *now you know you have this employee*, and intend to keep them in a position which abets a crime, which may means your company is not only civilly, but potentially criminal liable for that employee's actions. (4/5)
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Now imagine you're told "You absolutely cannot fire them, you just have to absorb the risk that they do this." In the *best* situation, you could try to buy adequate liability insurance. (3/5)
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Maybe there is no safe way to deploy these, in a business sense. Imagine you have an employee at your tech support phone bank who, once every 10,000 customers, gives detailed advice on how to commit suicide or murder. You'd fire them, and train the other employees not to do that. (2/5)
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
[CW: self-harm] If this poor kid had asked ChatGPT to generate an image of Moana from the Disney movie, he couldn't have bypassed ChatGPT's safety protocols in a billion years. The lack of care around their suicide detection systems is horrific. Negligence at a minimum, maybe worse.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
OK, Pittsburgh, what's the actual story with whatever's happening with Maggie's Farm Rum? Are they actually going out of business as some Redditors claim, or is this some sort of internal power struggle?
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
The world cries out for Hollow Knight Silksong to have difficulty levels and accessibility modes.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I Was A Salaryman At An IT Firm Who Became A K-Pop Demon Hunter In Another World
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
New video: Me and the folks from Curmudgeon's Corner talk about Superman (2025) and politics. There might be a lot of cursing. youtu.be/PK4T0DKNq8A
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
Made this in-joke meme for a friend and now I can't stop laughing to myself about it.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
Can't imagine why this song is on my mind in 2025. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xxg...
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I'm just a man asking you to stop pooping on a great band's song name.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I mean normally I'd say it's dumb but your politics are so shitty it could only be an improvement.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
You should write to Neko Case so she can tell you she hates you.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Hi, slightly unrelated, but could you change your display name away from the title of a New Pornographers song? They're a really good band and I'd rather they weren't even tangentially associated with a loser.
Osita Nwanevu (@ositanwanevu.com) reposted
People still: Look, we can't read history through a contemporary lens. There wasn't a consensus that slavery was wrong. Every 18th c. pamphlet: How can they do this? Are we SLAVES? In SLAVERY? The worst things you can be? Are they gonna put us IN CHAINS? Like in SLAVERY? Which is EVIL? Like SLAV-
Will Stancil (@whstancil.bsky.social) reposted
This is a hideous error in your thinking, but I can’t hold it against you, because the most supposedly sophisticated political thinkers in America did the same: you’re starting with the assumption that the election is a referendum on the economy, then assuming Dems losing means the economy was bad
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
It's violence for you to point out that they don't know what 'real' means
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I'm so sorry for the loss of your dignity.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Philip, were you Very Concerned in the 1980s that children were playing Dungeons and Dragons and becoming Satanists? 'cause that's what you sound like.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Right, I meant specifically "I went to the one lao sze chuan in Cleveland", not "I went to the one Szechuan restaurant in Cleveland"
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Went to the one near Cleveland and it was not great.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
THE TALE OF GENJI: ABRIDGED EDITION "This is Genji Hikaru. He really likes seducing people." THE END
Sam Minter (@abulsme.com) reposted
To be honest “nothing at all happened and the situation after is pretty much the same as the situation before” was close to the best case we could have hoped for out of this.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I never think of it at random, but every time it comes on I realize that "A Slow Song" would be a top 10 desert island choice for me.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
Joe Jackson's "Night and Day" was a better album than the 1980s deserved, and I will die on this hill.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
The first episode of Superman: The Animated Series from the mid-1990s does a good job of this, IMO.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
They are all thinly disguised/renamed versions of actual restaurants. Here's my spreadsheet: I did not actually make it to Sawayaka because it's only in Shizuoka and mostly in the suburbs and I still regret it.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Listen. Listen. I legitimately used Superman vs. Meshi as a checklist of family restaurants to try in Japan and this worked out EXTREMELY well.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
“accidental?” I see you’re an optimist.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
Supergirl and Superman are at the cutting edge of technology with their TRS-80 Pocket Computers. i.imgur.com/xGt5oPI.pngSup @jamesgunn.bsky.social
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Ah yes a dude well known for listening and carefully weighing criticism.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
Slightly diminish a band Earth, Wind, and Ire
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
The Carpenter
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Which comic + issue is this?
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
Once upon a time a professor of mine described Ronald Reagan as "being willing to fight the Soviets to the last Afghan" and this phrase has stayed with me for the rest of my life as it has remarkable explanatory power for nearly every heated interaction you will see on social media.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
COUNTER-ARGUMENT: have you seen the version of the Magic Flute with Link as Tamino and Mario as Papageno? www.youtube.com/live/6v111Y8...
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I think we don't have to get caught up in the math. There's a simpler principle here: blaming neoliberals for reactionaries' choices is silly. This is just another example of "Only liberals have agency, right-wingers get free passes."
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
So you liked Superman with its theme of fighting militarism and facsism. Wanna go to an opera with me? www.metopera.org/season/2025-...
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Thanks for clarifying. I don't think Will is in any sense saying the LGBT community "went too far"; how are you getting that from this thread? I just see him saying that marriage equality was significant and meaningful, which seems self-evidently true. At least to me.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I'm not gonna lie I feel the most urgent question raised by your skeet is why you put derision quotes around "Will".
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Reagent Square is Pittsburgh's well-known Alchemist District.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
You're right, it did! I think it's Very Funny™ that people keep posting that image at you like it's some sort of 'gotcha' when they clearly didn't actually read it.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I think OrbitalNips might be an LLM because it keeps posting an image that it doesn't seem to understand?
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
People keep reposting that screenshot like it's some sort of anti-stancil 'gotcha' and it is painfully clear that at no point did they ever actually read it.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
Same answer TBH.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
The best kind of true!
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
My meta-problem with that game is half of it is in the underworld but the underworld is dark and scary and I don't wanna go there.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
HOT TAKE: Squash are the vegetable with the highest dynamic range, they can be fantastic or they can be inedible trash.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Become ungovernable.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
I feel like our attempts to put LLMs in everything are going to naturally - and perhaps understandably - result in a lot of products with the same aura as this calculator that includes an abacus in case you don't trust the scary thinking machine.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
His stuff is the definition of "Stop trying to make 'fetch' happen."
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
It's literally in a subordinate clause talking about *an argument that machines can't think* (gesturing broadly at the Searle/Dennet Chinese Room discourse) and saying that that argument raises questions about how we should think about ourselves. He's right! It does! We've spent centuries on them!
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I'm being 100% serious right now: go back and read that "spark of humanity" skeet and ask yourself if "He's saying LLMs have a spark of humanity" is an accurate or fair summary of it. Answer key: it is not.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Of everything he said, that's IMO the silliest. But I also don't think "Stancil says LLMs are intelligent" is an accurate (or fair) summary of his point.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I'm saying that I looked at them, didn't find what you claimed, and your examples of him engaging in normal sloppy talk are extremely weaksauce. I would absolutely refer to an LLM as an "amazing thinking machine" in casual conversation. That doesn't mean I think they're intelligent or conscious.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
That post is not about LLMs. That post is about you.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Dude are you serious right now? Give me a break.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
OK, so he didn't say it. Thanks. Rounding up someone's weak yet extremely normal claim "LLMs are doing something that looks like cognition" to the strong unwarranted claim "LLMs have intelligence" just so you can score whuffie cred on the internet is pretty silly, IMO.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
OK, I literally went back to read his skeets from the past few days to see if he said what you claim ("LLM has intelligence") and don't see him saying that at all. Can you point me to where he said that? Thanks! The central claim I see him making is that the results are impressive.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
James Gunn is also on record saying "Her toes are fine. Jimmy just has issues."
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
People on social media are incapable of accepting nuance so I suspect your message is going to be rejected.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
The chances that you convince him that you find it useful are zero because you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
People are absolutely doing useful work with modern LLMs that they were unable to do with the Markov chain or gradient descent demo apps you or I wrote in a undergrad CS course. The datasets are part of that, but that doesn't invalidate the point.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
(One of the things that makes Watt's steam engine meaningful and revolutionary compared to the Aeolipile was that it was adapted to do useful work by being able to scale to real-world loads. This...sounds familiar.)
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
"James Watt's steam engine is just an expansion of something called the Aeolipile, the Ancient Greeks had it, yawn, how boring, why would anyone think it's significant."
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
from a writing standpoint the movie had me on its side for 3/4s, and then the last act was trash.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I feel like it was a movie that went wrong but for comprehensible reasons. Like, the effects were clearly (to me) trying to invoke relativistic effects when you approach the speed of light, but...it didn't work. They just ended up looking bad.
♨ naïve dumbass (@atticusgf.bsky.social) reposted reply parent
When I was in grad school, I learned how recommender systems worked. We built one from first principles. Then another. And another. At no point did I think that this wasn't _amazing_. It is incredible that math can do this! Y'all can be impressed with things even if you "understand" them.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Were there people doing this when steam engines were invented? "Pffft, Archimedes demonstrated this principle 2000 years ago, why are you all going nuts over this James Watt iteration"
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I think the specific bailey that infuriates me is "Yawn, this is boring, no big deal" when no one can point to a significant success before 2022 despite careers spent trying to make it happen. (I realize this is largely due to dataset size availability; the point still stands).
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
This exact motte-and-bailey(†) argument is happening all over social media 75,000 times a day and it's infuriating. † Yeah yeah slatestarcodex sucks, I still like that term.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
It sneaks up on you.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
This is such a lazy take. We've had electronic computers for decades and for the entire time researchers have been writing text analysis machines and chatbots that COULDN'T manage this interesting trick. If it's not mind-blowing to you, you just haven't paid attention for the past 75 years.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
“Whatever he wants.”
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social)
I knew that "Jimmy Olsen has rizz" has always been canon, dating back to the 1950s, but I didn't realize how deep subsequent storylines leaned into it.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
For the Clark/Lois dynamic, Tim Hanley's book "Investigating Lois Lane" is great. 1940s Superman was kiiiiiinda a real jerk to her! (He got better). As for Jimmy...
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
The details differ but the “jealous Lex” vibe is right out of Morrison’s All-Star Superman.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
All of these except the Lrypton plot beat are straight out of early Superman. Jimmy has been a sex magnet even across species since the 1960s. In the 1940s, Clark regularly used superpowers to beat Lois to a scoop. The Krypton-as-conquerors vibe was introduced by John Byrne’s 1990s run.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
Immediately thought of the scene in "Dr. No" when Connery put a hair across the closet door.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
No, I don't expect anything from you at all. I think it's fine if you want to snark at someone for a normal thing, just don't expect other people to not notice.
Peter Berger (@peterb.bsky.social) reply parent
I acknowledge you saying that you find it hard to be impressed by the advances in the models since 2022, but I also think that's a pretty lonely position to be in. Certainly it doesn't justify your snark at Stancil for being impressed. Being impressed by the current models is pretty normal, TBH.